Stop outsourcing the keys to greater engineering productivity — I often struggle with procrastination. Things are better now, but there are plenty of times when I still find myself absentmindedly doing things other than the work I am supposed to be doing. It reminds me of the classic Joel on Software post “Fire and Motion” and bouts of unproductivity. …

There’s more to developer flow than tools, docs & advocates — Getting new tools is like that moment when you were young and would get a new toy. You tore open the packaging, tossed the instructions aside, and for the next few hours, the only thing that mattered was this awesomely new and enthralling object in your hands. For me, the…

The most critical yet unloved work of engineering teams — The oldest known use of glue predates modern human history. In fact, the first discovered use of glue involved the use of birch bark tar to glue stones together. When archaeologists examined the specimen, they dated it back to 200,000 years ago! Glue has since evolved over the years into…

5 things I have learned that make Amazon tick — Every company you join comes with its own culture and language. The longer a company has been around and the bigger it gets, the more embedded the culture becomes to the company and its employees. You begin to adopt the customs and language as your own. I had never heard…

Startup success & failure depends on these five things — The year 2021 will be remembered as a record breaking year for the world of startups and venture capital. The total amount of venture investment raised was $643 billion, nearly doubling the amount of funding raised the year prior. To put this in perspective, there was 10x the capital deployed…

To fix notifications, working backwards from the right place — The demise of Clubhouse* will someday become a business school case study in the power of notifications to sink a high-flying startup. While I host regular shows about startups on the app, the insane number of notifications the app would send forced me and many others to stop notifications entirely…

Four tips to clarify communications with managers & executives — I used to write long emails. When I say long, I mean pages upon pages long. You would have to scroll and scroll and scroll some more to get to the end. This was not every email, just the ones reporting on outcomes or providing instructions on a program I…

A framework for how you can make better decisions faster — Sometimes you just do not know what to expect. Case in point with SxSW where I was the week before. If you do not know, SxSW is a conference hosted every March based in Austin. It started as a music festival in 1987, then added film and tech programs. This…

To inspire innovation requires giving teams freedom to explore — While this is supposed to be a weekly publication, some weeks are just too busy to sit down and write. Such was the case with my trip to Singapore last week. First, it was just a week, so three days are already lost in a haze of jetlag. Then, because…